IKP Centre for Advancement in Agricultural Practices (ICAAP) is jointly owned by IKP Trust and IFMR Trust and is incorporated under Section 25 of the Companies Act (1956). Its mission is to improve agricultural productivity and farm income in India for small-holder farmers through improvements in agricultural practices by acting as a bridge between the knowledge available at research laboratories and academia and organizations that directly interact with smallholder farmers.

In serving its mission, ICAAP’s key partners have been International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU). Two of its key past programs have been:

Advanced Agricultural Practice Knowledge Portal

The extensive agronomic knowledge compiled by ICAAP in partnership with IFPRI and TNAU is organized into this internet-based knowledge management portal that ICAAP. The portal’s knowledge repository contains not only globally generated content but also locally relevant content and experiences to cater to the farmers of Thanjavur district (latter in the form of video interviews with practitioners in the local language, Tamil). The portal offers information on rice, black gram, green gram, banana, sugarcane, coconut, potato, turmeric, tapioca, mango and animal enterprises including poultry farming, goat farming, cattle farming, rabbit farming and fodder crops; and is designed for use by farmers, extension agents, agricultural scientists, agro-industries, agri-financing institutions, policy makers, planners and other stakeholders in Indian agriculture. It is presently being moved to another technology platform.

Extension Project in Thanjavur District

ICAAP has provided extension services to paddy farmers in Thanjavur district with the dual goal of understanding the agricultural extension mechanism through first-hand experience and also to assess the on-field efficacy of the agronomic content compiled and validated by the ICAAP-IFPRI-TNAU collaboration. In the year 2013-14, ICAAP has conducted a study along with IFPRI and IFMR to study the positive effects of credit availability and availability of relevant and timely technical advice on farm productivity. ICAAP has played the central role in the technical advice part of the study, using technologies developed by International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU) that follow intense extension approach. The study showed significant yields between 5 and 10 percent due to the application of superior technical advice. During 2014-15, ICAAP conducted another study to assess the comparative effectiveness of different channels of agricultural extension – human extension (farmer associations, self-help groups, and progressive farmers) and tele-extension. The results showed that the most effective channel was a combination of manual and tele-extension.

ICAAP Knowledge Centre

Based on the experience of its earlier programs, ICAAP is presently working on setting up a knowledge centre that will act as a reliable backend supplier of agronomic content to farmers and extension mechanisms that are already serving farmers.